Paraguay: Land dispute victory for displaced indigenous community

The
community is very happy. The young people, who can now build a new
future, and the elderly, who fought for so many years, are in high
spirits.

”

Julia Cabello, lawyer and director of the Paraguayan NGO Tierraviva

Vie, 03/02/2012

A land deal finalized this week between Paraguayan authorities
and a land owner in the country’s central region will allow a
long-displaced indigenous community to rebuild in safety and dignity,
Amnesty International said today.

For almost two decades, the
Yakye Axa indigenous community have fought a legal battle to return to
their ancestral lands while around 90 families were forced to live in
destitute conditions alongside a nearby highway.

Years ago,
private landowners moved in and took over their lands. Indigenous
families were dispersed among privately owned cattle ranches, where many
were mistreated and exploited.

A lawyer representing the Yakye
Axa yesterday told Amnesty International that the families in the
community will soon move to the newly acquired land, comprising more
than 12,000 hectares within the ancestral lands of the Enxet ethnic
group

“The community is very happy. The young people, who can
now build a new future, and the elderly, who fought for so many years,
are in high spirits,” said Julia Cabello, a lawyer and director of the
Paraguayan NGO Tierraviva, which works with the Yakye Axa and other communities of the Enxet ethnic group.

In 1993, the Yakye Axa community started the legal process to reclaim a portion of their ancestral lands.

In 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Paraguay to restore the Yakye Axa’s lands.

Meanwhile
the conditions in the roadside encampments remained dire, with the lack
of access to basic services contributing to illness and a series of
preventable deaths in the community.

Once the Yakye Axa
community is resettled, under the terms of the Inter-American Court
ruling, the Paraguayan authorities must also set up a US$950,000 fund
aimed at community development.

The fund is destined towards
educational, housing, agricultural and health projects, as well as the
provision of drinking water and sanitation.

“The Yakye Axa can
now rebuild a secure and stable community and live in accordance with
their culture, free from the dangers they have faced for too long in the
precarious roadside camps,” said Guadalupe Marengo, Deputy Americas
Programme Director at Amnesty International.

This latest
indigenous land deal comes several months after another Enxet indigenous
community, the Sawhoyamaxa, negotiated an agreement in September 2011
to return to their ancestral lands. The negotiations are still ongoing.

For
more than two decades, Tierraviva has been supporting indigenous
communities like the Yakye Axa and the Sawhoyamaxa to return to their
ancestral lands, which are vital to their cultural identity and way of
life.

“We hope the Yakye Axa case becomes a positive example of
the direction the Paraguayan authorities intend to take with all the
unresolved indigenous land claims in the country and that the
authorities will establish an effective mechanism to process such claims
and make indigenous rights a key priority,” said Guadalupe Marengo.